[SJUG] Installing a Ubuntu Hardy Heron Java Development Environment on a USB flash drive -- Inderjeet Singh's Blog
Harris Mark R
Mark.R.Harris at doc.state.or.us
Mon Jul 7 15:52:55 PDT 2008
For the really progressive developer!
R. Mark Harris
Systems Analyst
Development Unit
Information Technology Services
Oregon Dept. of Corrections
________________________________
From: Aaron.Houston at Sun.COM [mailto:Aaron.Houston at Sun.COM]
Sent: Monday, July 07, 2008 3:50 PM
To: jug-leaders at jugs.dev.java.net
Subject: [jug-leaders] Installing a Ubuntu Hardy Heron Java Development
Environment on a USB flash drive -- Inderjeet Singh's Blog
Hello JUG leaders... some of you all may be interested in this...on the
homepage of java.net...Aaron
Installing a Ubuntu Hardy Heron Java Development Environment on a USB
flash drive
<http://weblogs.java.net/blog/inder/archive/2008/07/installing_a_ub_1.ht
ml>
Posted by inder on July 06, 2008 at 12:16 PM | Comments (1)
<http://weblogs.java.net/blog/inder/archive/2008/07/installing_a_ub_1.ht
ml#comments>
USB flash drives are really cheap these days, so I decided to create a
portable environment that contains all my favorite applications, as well
as Java IDEs and utilities. This is attractive since I can boot up any
computer with this thumb drive, and have the same environment to work
with. Besides, it is kind of cool.
You would think that this would be as easy as booting from the install
disk of Ubuntu, and choosing USB disk as the target drive. Alas, it is
not so. Ubuntu will try to install Grub which will be unable to boot
from your USB disk. Moreover, I started running into problems with using
the same USB disk at different computers. So, I searched around and
found some excellent articles at debuntu.org
<http://www.debuntu.org/how-to-install-ubuntu-linux-on-usb-bar> and by
Ryan Cloke
<http://www.ryancloke.com/ubuntu-804-hardy-heron-live-usb-how-to/> .
Both were written for the prior version 8.04 of Hardy Heron but are
still largely appropriate. There were a few typos in the instructions,
so I decided to reproduce instructions here with my edits, as well as
add instructions related to setting up the Java development environment.
Prepare the USB Disk
Get a USB disk, at least 1 GB in size. I got an 8GB one since then I
dont have to worry about conserving disk space for a while.
These instructions assume that you already have a Linux installation to
use to prepare the USB linux installation. If you know how to do this
with Windows, please share instructions as comments to this blog.
The first step is to partition the USB disk using fdisk. But to use
fdisk, you will need to identify the device associated with the USB
disk. You can do so by using fdisk itself:
sudo fdisk -l
Scan output for entries similar to this.
Disk /dev/sdc: 8017 MB, 8017412096 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 974 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xcb527ec4
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 * 1 95 763056 83 Linux
/dev/sdc2 96 974 7060567+ 83 Linux
As you can notice, the disk /dev/sdc is 8GB that matches with my USB
disk size. So, /dev/sdc is the correct device for my USB disk. Note that
it is very important to identify the correct device. If you choose
/dev/sda you will probably overwrite your existing hard disk losing all
data and the OS on it!).
In my case above, I already have the USB disk properly partitioned. But
you will need to do the same if you haven't already done so (Note that
this will erase ALL the data on the disk, so back up anything important
before executing these instructions):
1. sudo fdisk /dev/sdc
2. Delete any existing partitions by typing "d". Type "p" to check
that the disk is cleaned out.
3. Type "n" to create a new partition. Choose primary, with id 1.
For size, choose the default starting track, but for end use +770M
instead of a track number. This will create a disk of size 770MB, just
enough to hold the live CD image needed for booting. You can choose to
increase this a little bit, but making it larger has no benefit since
the contents of this partition will never change. The second partition
is what needs to hold all of your data and future updates, so make that
occupy the rest of the space.
4. Type "n" to create the second partition. Again, choose primary,
with id 2. For size, choose default settings.
5. Type "a", and select 1 to mark the first partition as the boot
partition.
6. Type "w" to write these changes to the USB disk and exit fdisk.
Now we need to format these partitions:
sudo mkfs.vfat -F 16 -n UbuntuLive /dev/sdc1
sudo mkfs.ext2 -b 4096 -L casper-rw /dev/sdc2
Prepare the Ubuntu Installation
Download the Hardy Heron 8.04.1 ISO image from Ubuntu website
<http://releases.ubuntu.com/hardy/> . I chose the 32-bit i386 image
(ubuntu-8.04.1-desktop-i386.iso) because it is going to run on almost
all CPUs. The first step is to mount the downloaded iso image.
sudo mkdir -p /media/iso
sudo mount -o loop ubuntu-8.04.1-desktop-i386.iso /media/iso
Copy the contents of this image to a temporary directory
(/home/inder/hardy-usb in my case):
mkdir -p /home/inder/hardy-usb
sudo cp -rf casper dists install pics pool preseed .disk isolinux/*
md5sum.txt README.diskdefines casper/vmlinuz casper/initrd.gz
install/mt86plus /home/inder/hardy-usb/
Next, we will modify this installation to fix some bugs specific to USB
disk installation.
cd /home/inder/hardy-usb/
mv isolinux.cfg syslinux.cfg
sudo vi syslinux.cfg
You should replace the contents of this file with the following:
DEFAULT usblive
GFXBOOT bootlogo
APPEND file=/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper initrd=initrd.gz quiet
splash --
LABEL usblive
menu label ^Start Ubuntu and save changes to USB
kernel vmlinuz
append file=/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper persistent
initrd=initrd.gz quiet splash --
LABEL live
menu label ^Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer
kernel vmlinuz
append file=/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper initrd=initrd.gz quiet
splash --
LABEL live-install
menu label ^Install Ubuntu
kernel vmlinuz
append file=/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper only-ubiquity
initrd=initrd.gz quiet splash --
LABEL memtest
menu label Test ^memory
kernel mt86plus
append -
LABEL hd
menu label ^Boot from first hard disk
localboot 0x80
append -
DISPLAY isolinux.txt
TIMEOUT 300
PROMPT 1
F1 f1.txt
F2 f2.txt
F3 f3.txt
F4 f4.txt
F5 f5.txt
F6 f6.txt
F7 f7.txt
F8 f8.txt
F9 f9.txt
F0 f10.txt
Save the file, and move on to the next step of fixing another bug in
initrd.gz:
cd /home/inder/hardy-usb/
mkdir initrd_old
cd initrd_old
gunzip < ../initrd.gz | cpio -i --make-directories
cd scripts
sudo vi casper
Now, search for "mount ${cowdevice} -t ${cow_fstype} -o
rw,noatime,mode=755 /cow". Remove "mode=755". So the line should look
like this:
mount ${cowdevice} -t ${cow_fstype} -o rw,noatime /cow || panic "Can not
mount $cowdevice on /cow"
After your have modified and saved the casper script, we need to repack
the initrd file system.
cd ..
find ./ | cpio -H newc -o > ../initrdnew
cd ..
sudo rm initrd.gz
sudo mv initrdnew initrd
sudo gzip initrd
sudo rm -rf initrd_old
Copying Ubuntu to the USB disk
sudo mount /dev/sdc1 /media/usb
cd /home/inder/hardy-usb/
sudo cp -rf .disk * /media/usb
sudo umount /media/usb
Make the disk bootable
sudo syslinux -f /dev/sdb1
If you had made the mistake of trying to install Ubuntu directly from
the CDROM, you will need to get rid of Grub. You can do so by installing
Lilo to overwrite MBR:
sudo lilo -M /dev/sdb
Yay, you have the USB disk with Ubuntu. Now reboot the PC with the USB
disk plugged in. You may have to select the bios setting to boot from
the USB. On my laptop, I have to press F12, and on my home desktop, I
have to press F11. You can also make the USB disk as a higher priority
boot device.
Configuring the Ubuntu Installation
Boot up your PC from the USB disk. The system will boot into the default
Ubuntu account. Open a terminal and run sudo passwd to change the root
password.
Create a user account for yourself by using the
System|Administration|Users and Groups menu. Ensure that in the create
account screen, you have given this user the permissions to administer
the system.
Disable the automatic login to the ubuntu user. Select
System|Administration|Login Window menu. Select the Security tab, and
unselect "Enable Automatic Login" and "Enable Timed Login". Note that
you can still go to the ubuntu user by typing Ctrl-Alt-F1. I could not
figure out a simple way to prevent the system from automatically logging
in ubuntu user. If you know how to do this, please share that as
comments to this blog.
Prevent Ubunutu from hibernating. Launch sudo gconf-editor. Go to
apps|gnome-power-manager and uncheck the can_hibernate option. This
setting didn't really work on my system though.
Configure Ubuntu to allow software from multiple repositories. Go to
System|Administration|Software Sources Menu. Under the Ubuntu tab,
choose "Community-maintained Open Source Software (universe)". Also,
choose "Software restricted by copyright and legal issues (multiverse)".
I also unselected the "Source code" option hoping that it may save me
precious space on my USB disk by avoiding source-code for programs.
At this time, you may want to update your system with the latest
versions of the various packages from the System | Administration |
Update Manager menu. However, be selective in updating especially if you
have a USB disk less than 2GB in size. The reason being that all the new
packages that you install will be installed on your second partition,
while the original packages will remain on the first partition. You may
still want to upgrade commonly-used packages such as firefox. Also, dont
bother trying to remove any of the unused packages since, again, they
are on the first partition, and will not really free up any space on the
second partition.
Install flash player for firefox. This is useful if you want to play
YouTube videos.
sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree
You may also want Firefox configured such that it does not use the USB
disk for storing caches. For that, start firefox, and type about:config
in the URL bar. search for cache, and set browser.cache.disk.enable, and
browser.cache.offline.enable properties to false.
Installing Java
Ubuntu does not come pre-installed with Java. Unfortunately, there are
some bugs in Java packaqes, so just using apt-get will give you some
weird errors regarding libjli.so. Here are steps to fix this problem
(instructions adapated from swik.net
<http://swik.net/Ubuntu/Only+Ubuntu/Install+Sun+Java+with+the+Firefox+Pl
ugin+on+an+Ubuntu+Live+CD+or+USB/b7mfg> ):
sudo su // switch to administrator role
apt-get install sun-java6-jdk
ln -s / /cow
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/lib/i386/jli
dpkg --configure -a
Run javac --version to ensure that the JDK installed correctly.
You can also install openjdk-6-jdk package instead. In that case, make
sure that you adjust LD_LIBRARY_PATH accordingly before running dpkg.
Install other useful tools such as subversion and maven:
sudo apt-get install maven2
sudo apt-get install subversion
Installing Eclipse Ganymede
Download Eclipse from eclipse.org or issue the following command from
command-line:
wget
http://ganymede-mirror1.eclipse.org/technology/epp/downloads/release/gan
ymede/R/eclipse-jee-ganymede-linux-gtk.tar.gz
tar xvfz eclipse-jee-ganymede-linux-gtk.tar.gz
sudo mv eclipse /opt/
You can now run eclipse from /opt/eclipse/eclipse. I also installed a
short-cut for Eclipse on my menu-bar. You can choose the icon images for
Eclipse from
/opt/eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.platform_3.3.100.v200806172000/. You
may also want to update or add Eclipse plugins at this time.
Once you have a configuration you are pleased with, you may want to
create a backup so that you can restore it in case anything goes wrong.
I did this by plugging-in the USB disk in my other linux desktop, and
then using the dd command:
sudo dd if=/dev/sdb1 of=/home/inder/hardy-working-disk1.iso sudo dd
if=/dev/sdb2 of=/home/inder/hardy-working-disk2.iso
You can restore this by issuing the dd commands in reverse:
sudo dd if=/home/inder/hardy-working-disk1.iso of=/dev/sdb1 sudo dd
if=/home/inder/hardy-working-disk2.iso of=/dev/sdb2
That concludes this rather long blog. It took me several installs and
reinstalls to get it right, but the results are worth it. I am enjoying
my USB linux installation and using it to write this blog.
Have you installed linux on USB disks as well? If so, share your
experiences as comments to this blog. Thanks for reading.
--
Aaron Houston
Program Coordinator
Java User Groups
http://community.java.net/jugs/
Java Champions
https://java-champions.dev.java.net/
Technology Outreach
http://developers.sun.com/events/techdays/speakers/index.html
Sun Microsystems, Inc
Menlo Park, Ca
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